Chapter II: Part 2

When the wheat is nearly ready for the reaping, the swifts begin to think of the journey to Africa. They are among the last birds to arrive here in the spring, but the first to depart (excepting the cuckoo). When the Voice speaks in the night they mount many miles, flying up to the stars, and rush to the south. It is a sad time for some birds, as the instinct for migration is so intense that if any young are unable to fly they are left. What caused this remorseless migration in the first place, and why does it happen? Nobody knows. It is one of the problems insoluble by research or reasoning; insoluble as the mystery of life itself.

SAMARITANS

Towards the end of August a pair of house-martins (or eave-swallows--I prefer the name given them by Richard Jefferies) came to my cottage wall, and clung, two slim, black-and-white fairies, to the rough cob surface. Excited twitterings and peckings for a minute, then they flew away. Almost immediately one returned with a beakful of mud, taken from the verge of a ruddle-red pool in the roadway. This was tacked to the wall, close under the ragged fringe of thatch, and away sped the bird as her mate came with his burden. All day they worked, seeming never to feed.

But the nest grew slowly. Perhaps their other muddied cup had been knocked down by boys, or sparrows had seized it; by their intense eagerness it appeared to me that their first brood had failed altogether; there was something of the frenzy of April in their labour.

In the evening I was amazed by what I saw. The toiling pair had been joined by about a dozen other martins, all bearing beakfuls of mud and grass to the precipitous site. In regular order came mud, quickly moulded and kneaded into place, then came a broken straw, a rootlet, or a twitch of grass. There was just time to place this in position before another bird would arrive. A sweet soft trickle of eagerness fell continually from just above my window. The next morning succour was still availing, and quickly the nest grew. We discussed this in the village, but even the oldest granfer had never heard tell of such a thing before. Toilers in the harvest fields (the “unimaginative labourers”) paused and regarded. They were interested, and many pondered the problem with me.

“League o’ Nations,” grinned one. “There is much friendship among birds,” I said. “Aiy, aiy!” agreed another, and told me in the soft melodious burr of the west country how, in his garden that spring, a robin had fed a nest of hedge-sparrows.

The nest was finished in three days. The lining of feathers was a speedy business, for I scattered a handful on the ground beneath, wishing to give my small aid. I am sure the pair were grateful, for on the fourth day, when I inspected from a ladder, the first egg was laid and the mother was not alarmed by my intrusion.

This intensive construction is not usual. It is not instinctive. It is the result of reason and decency of life in their colonies. Rooks, being amoral, would not help one another. Martins live together in trust and decency. Who, hearing their song (jumbled though it may be), can doubt this.

“League of Nations,” a simple man had said to me. I wondered if the hopes of Richard Jefferies will ever be fulfilled. Are not the eave-swallows wiser than us? Sometimes I think so.

SPORTSMEN OF THE RUBBISH-HEAPS

An old, faded notice board, bearing the legend that trespassers will be prosecuted, leans at a low angle in the hedge; newer and larger boards announce that the land is “admirable for building purposes” and for sale. A gate guards a gap in the hedge, over which bold boys swarm on Saturdays and Sundays when no policeman is in sight.

This preserve, as the crow flies, is about eight miles from London Bridge in a south-easterly direction. It is known to dustmen, who dump their loads upon its once-green fields, and it is also known to certain cockney sportsmen.

Trams and omnibuses pass near its violated woodlands (soon to fall), and yet its possibilities are immense. One Sunday after the war I walked there. Four shooting parties, complete with dogs, were out after its game. Now, it is not lawful to pursue game on Sundays; nor is it lawful to carry a gun without a licence. But the sportsmen do not mind that. Their guns have sawn-off barrels, and take apart in less than ten seconds. An inside pocket conceals both. As for their dogs--well, although I am a dog-lover and like rough shooting, I would not care to be seen in my own village with such dogs. Every man I met would grin and wink--long, swift dogs they are, a mixture of greyhound and bulldog, chiefly, with various other strains, in order to make them that rare breed--the true lurcher. They never bark. They look slyly at you. Often they grin in dog-fashion, suspiciously, almost a leer.

The sportsmen shoot anything. The last hare has been gone for years, even a rabbit is an unusual sight, almost as rare as a partridge. Generations ago gravel was taken from this estate, leaving shallow pits that in winter are filled with water. Snipe haunt the pools even now, but they fly up so quickly and then zigzag that it is impossible to hit them.

When a shot is fired guns are hidden, and heads look round for policemen. Sparrows are common game, thrushes and blackbirds are considered the equivalent of pheasants, and the large missel-thrush causes as much excitement and admiration as a first woodcock. A pigeon is as rare as a golden plover, and talked of for weeks.

Sport is not confined to turning-up birds and snap-shooting. The superior ones carry guns; the lowlier fraternity hunt the humble rat, who loves the rubbish-heaps. Their holes are everywhere, by broken umbrellas, decrepit straw hats, burst boots, papers, straw, tins, novels, bottles, and old torn shirts. Little terriers quiver with excitement as their masters from Deptford and Shoreditch dig with the crowbars--great excitement this.

Of course the boys must have their shooting parties. Some of them are very skilful with the catapult, and when bored with life they are quite equal to shooting at their elders. Others frequent the pools, wading after efts and sticklebacks. Once I saw a systematic dragging of the ponds with the aid of an old army blanket.

At another end of the preserve bird-catchers are busy with clap-nets and call-birds. Perhaps, if you go near, surly looks will greet you, and you may hear the sound of frail wings ceaselessly fluttering against the bars of tragically overcrowded and small cages. Sometimes goldfinches flit over, their sweet sipping notes rising and falling as they pass to the thistle-heads of last autumn; and wistfully comes the answer from the cages as beaks covered with blood are thrust again and again through the bars.

I knew this place years ago, when it was the country. The land is for sale; they are going to build; and the house-squares of civilisation will be better than the green fields so foully ravaged. But it is nothing to do with me. The happy, happy days of boyhood are gone for ever, with their hopes and their friendships: I shall never go there again, nor shall I hear the wood-larks singing there on a morning of May, nor watch the kingfisher as he draws a sapphire line to the pit where every spring we found his nest. All these are dead: let the houses and the streets obliterate the place for ever.

RUNAWAYS

Many pet birds escape from captivity every year, and their distressed owners wonder how they fare. For it is generally understood that the wild creatures resent one who has had long association with man, and usually do their best to kill it. But this, I think, is merely a fiction. It is said that should a canary join a flock of goldfinches, they will taboo it, and even fall upon it and eventually kill it with their beaks. Cases that I have known prove exactly the reverse. I know that a canary among sparrows meets with kindly treatment, perhaps because its appearance is so much more striking than their own dull plumage that like primitive savages seeing a white man for the first time, they are inclined to fall down and worship it.

In Hyde Park one summer I saw a little green love-bird feeding on seeds of the grass. Now lovebirds are often born in captivity, and their wings are feeble. But in this case the bird had the full power of its wings, and when a boy tried to capture it, it flew away with the speed and agility of a mothflitsie, or jack-snipe.

Even such a bird as the parrot can support itself. There is a rookery in the Lewisham Infirmary Gardens, and for some years past a gray and red African parrot has been flying about with rooks, who seem to welcome its presence.

In flight it resembles a pigeon and a hawk, and its presence among them is all the more mystifying, because the antipathy of rooks to a hawk is well known; they mob one and drive it away whenever seen. The Lewisham parrot escaped before the war, and survived many winters, for I saw it feeding with them in the Recreation Grounds during 1919.

Its curved beak prevents it from digging in the ground, and in the spring and summer seasons there are few seeds for it to feed on, especially in a crowded suburb like Lewisham. I have watched to see if the rooks feed it, but have never been able to discover.

It would be interesting to know how the spirit of fraternity is born between birds of such widely divergent characteristics. The parrot, however, cannot change its plumage, although it squawks like a young rook and caws like an old one. This may be the explanation of the phenomenon--it can speak the language like a native!

LONDON CHILDREN AND WILD FLOWERS

(_To W. de la M._)

The sphere-blooms of the dandelion have left their anchorage and are floating away in the warm wind. That same wind bears with it a vague scent, for the wild flowers are open to the sun, while the white buds of the may-tree and the lilac-blossom of the keeper’s cottage yonder have come before their time. The yellow celandine petals have gone from the meadow, already their little heart-shaped leaves are tinged at the edge with the rust of decay; the brighter buttercups drink deeply of the poured sun-wine, and the red sorrel and pale cuckoo flowers move as the wind comes more strongly. No form of flower life remains for long. When I came here but a few weeks since the celandine was everywhere; a brave flower, for it rises so early, and is one of the first signs of life stirring again in the cold earth. Then the wood-anemones shone like stars among the brown leaves under the hazel wands and ashpoles of the covert, and on the raised bank near the vermin tree where the marauder stoats and pirate crows hang, the sweet violets drooped their heads, shy in their loveliness. I passed by that bank to-day, but the sweet violets have gone, even as the wood-anemones are withering. Nothing remains for long. But the first swift screams high in the azure, his black curved wings bearing him in fast circles, less graceful than the swallow, who floats on the bosom of the wind, then falls and turns sharply rather than sweeps through the air with the effortless thrusts of the swift. So in the place of the violet’s scent I have the scream of the swift, and the cuckoo calls above the dying wind-flowers.

I leant against a wooden fence, placed to keep the cattle in the meadow from straying into the covert behind, and to guard them from the brook that ran at the edge of the hazels. High nettles hid the lower rails of the fence, growing straight and green, and giving off a heavy odour from their flowers. From afar a cuckoo was calling, but near me the only sounds were the burring of the dusky humble bees at the nettle flowers, and the soft voice of the brook. A great cloud shadow came rushing over the meadow, the wind lost its warmth, and a few drops pattered on the hawthorn. Immediately a blackbird sang on the topmost bough of an oak tree in the wood, and a wren trilled from some hidden bush. Gently the rain fell, plashing on the veined leaves of the hazels; a yellow-green wave of light descended the distant hills and followed the black shadow over cornfield, meadow, and webbed pattern of hop field, washing the red oast-houses with instant colour. The swift sunlight swept down to the meadow, the shadow passed onwards, and again the sun gave its vitalising rays to the grass and the wild flowers.

The blackbird left the oak tree and dropped down to continue his search among the moist leaf-mould; the wren was silent. Just behind, and dividing the field from the pheasant wood, the brook, its waters swelling with light, brimmed smoothly round a curve. A sweet little whispering call, oft repeated and so gentle that it might have been the voice of the brook, came from the ashpoles beyond. A long-tailed tit was gathering the down from the hazel catkins, calling, or rather murmuring, in shy ecstatic love to her mate as she did so. The sunlight--rendered whiter and purer by the wind from the far hills--streamed down through the nut trees and the opening buds of ash; as the leaves rustled they caught the sunbeams, and were turned a lucent green. Mingling with the tender notes of my little bottle-bird gathering her material was the voice of the brook, almost inaudible, but lifting the heart with sudden joy for its poem.

I watched the two birds, so happy with each other, and heedless of anything but the immediate joyful moment, carry the down to a quick-set hedge, snowy with blossom, dividing the meadow from the wheatfield. They disappeared for a moment among its greeneries and spiky thorns, and then flew back to the covert, still murmuring to each other in their wheezy, subdued tones. In the hedge the house was nearly completed, and had been fashioned with wondrous skill. Outside the birds had woven gray lichen from the apple trees with the green moss found under the oaks, and gradually a long, bottle-shaped nest had grown among the thorns. Several hundreds of feathers had been borne from the farmyard--distant over a mile--each journey made with the feeble jerky flight. Think of the infinite labour and searching before the cradle is ready for the dozen minute eggs that will nestle in its soft cup! The little chap and his adoring wife were not alarmed at my presence: I stood within two yards of their nest, but they flew into the hedge and out again without fear or distress.

A wild bee hummed among the nettles, content and self-sufficient; a crow slanted overhead, veering as he saw me, for crows and gamekeepers hate each other equally; a dead leaf fluttered into the water and was carried in a foam-capped whirlpool under the roots of the hawthorn. Three willow-wrens came to the tree, and sought the insects that walked over the broad platform of the leaves; one flew to the surface of the brook and seized a horse-fly struggling in the water. The stream sang and sang, carrying the leaf that had left the tree for ever; the sunlight flashed a burnished ripple, was gone again, and the bees brushed against the nettles, wondering if they should stay there or gather their harvest from the bluebells, lit by the shuffling shadow mazes, whose honey lay ready for loading. All the morning the bells on the green towers of stalk had been pealing their chimes of fragrance to the bees; the busy harvesters went heavily past, drawing their song-inspiration from the infinite flame of the sun, passing from bell to bell with an eagerness that must cause the wild hyacinths to rejoice--for would they not shortly vanish like the celandines and the wind-flowers? Nothing remains for long. A brief life, and they have gone whither all things that draw upon the earth-energy must go. Though the blackbird sing so leisurely, the flowers stand gently timorous in their fragility, the veined leaf stain itself with the sunbeams, and I am exalted in the “light and fire of summer,” yet for all there is only so little of time. Therefore, it seemed to me, by the brimming water, so pitiable that millions were confined in factory and office, breathing the air fouled by exhaust of petrol engine and chimney, while the brook rippled so sweetly, and the living air formed a passionate stream with the energy of the sunbeams.

Dreaming by the brook, I thought of other woods nearer London, which are so dear because of old association with the friend of my boyhood. There still the nightingale returns, the jay lurks, and the mysterious nightjar wheels when the chafer-beetles flit against the oak leaves at twilight. And yet, less than half a mile away, is a busy tram terminus. The wild things in freedom love their haunts and are not easily driven away, but in the higher wood--beautiful in spring with apple blossom, uncurling brakefern, silver birch and sheen of bluebell--no birds sang as alone I walked among its violated sanctities. It was the hour of solitude, when the sun almost was quenched and the moon had not yet come above the dim hills. The paths were beaten into mire by the passing and re-passing of a thousand feet, acres of bluebells had been uprooted and taken away, many trampled and crushed, or gathered and cast carelessly on the paths. The apple blossom was stripped from the trees. In his instinctive effort to possess beauty, man invariably destroys it--for is not all beauty ever elusive? It is the subconscious, or deeper than subconscious, realisation of this elusiveness of beauty that causes the sadness of its contemplation--the blossoms were gone, a whole spring-life of them, carried away by the people who had come from Walworth, Shoreditch, and Woolwich. Branches of those graceful trees, the silver birches, had been torn and wrenched off; not content with decimating the flowers, grasping hands had broken the smaller trees. A week ago, before the fatal beauty of the apple bloom had drawn the hordes from their strongholds, I found dozens of thrushes’ and blackbirds’ nests--some with eggs, others with fledgelings--all these disappeared on that Sunday. No beauty remains inviolate for long.

I walked slowly to the tram terminus, where the crowded cars waited to bear the many people back to London, thinking that soon the woods would be down, and houses with their inevitable laurel and rhododendron bushes crowd together in regular patches; the sooner, perhaps, the better. Memory of former days was only too poignantly present.

In the cars sat the women and the men, each one clasping a flower or a fragment of blossom--of hawthorn, apple, or chestnut tree; the little children wriggled and chattered, holding in their arms great bunches of bluebells with their sappy stalks gleaming white where the sun had not stained them; boys with purple-dusty grass bennets and girls with lilac-coloured cuckoo flowers and drooping buttercups. A phantom carillon still chimed from the wild hyacinths, though their towers were fallen and the belfries wrecked. I looked at the transfigured faces of the children--old or young, they were all children--who breathed in the smoke and worked in the shadow, and saw that the beauty of the wild flowers had passed into their eyes; although the woods were ravaged, the spoiling and pillaging had not been in vain. For two or three days wilting flowers and stolen blossom would remind them of the sunlight and the fresh air, of the cloud shadow that swept up and the warmth that followed when the beams of light lacquered the branches of the trees.

I was filled with an ecstasy; the car, ordinarily so drab with its burden of artisans and factory workers, seemed illumined and vitalised with yellow, the colour of happiness; a radiance hovered about the children, as though the buttercups had dislustred their gold upon the air. I wanted to shout my joy aloud. Here was a manifestation of my hopes for mankind, the thoughts ever with me; at night when only the stars are in the sky, or when the moon is old and like a scarred shield nailed under the rafters of heaven; at dawn, when the light flows over the eastern bar of the world till it drains into the western sunset. One thought by night and one thought by day--my hope is for the happiness of mankind. Could words of mine but tell you of the dream that lurks by the brook in summer, or with the clouds floating with snowy sails in cerulean waters! There the Immortals are waiting. See the joy and happiness that is with every swallow flying low over a lake, his liquid image gliding under him. What is all the philosophy in the world to the joy of the beautiful swallow? Civilisations have risen and crumbled, faded into nothingness, like footprints in the desert obliterated by sand. The sweet little whispering call of my long-tailed titmice fashioning their bottle nest, so happy in the sunshine, is a wiser and more profound utterance than all the philosophy collected from the books of the world....

The tram drew nearer London with its ragged children; had I doubted it before, no longer was the ideal of the artist obscured from me--you must hear it. It must be the ideal of man to beautify the lives of those who pass nearly all their days in the places whence the wild birds and the flowers have gone for evermore.

I thought of these things as the voice of the brook mingled with the love-whisper of my little bottle-birds, and the bees droned their anthem to the pealing chimes of the bluebells. For every year the flowers come, the migrants travel across the great dim sea, the wheat sways and bends as the wind rushes over, and the silver-burning sun swings across the sky; but never enough of these do the little ones in the city see; life does not remain for long. And I saw the children of the trams reflected in the light-burthened brook, and was glad, even though the buttercups had gone from the meadow, and the wandering bees sought in vain in those other woods for the loveliness of the stained apple blossom.

MEADOW GRASSES

(_To B. E. H. T._)

_i_

A brimstone butterfly drifted with the wind over the waving grasses, and settled on the shallow cup of a tall flower, John-go-to-bed-at-noon. The bright flowers were closing, for the sun was high. It paused for an instant only, and then fluttered over the hedge and was gone. Came a common white butterfly--a weed of the air, hated by the countrymen: yet part of summer’s heart as it flickered like a strayed snowflake in the sunshine, passing the whorled spires of red-green sorrel and glazed petals of buttercup, living its brief hour among the scents and colours of summer. Vibrating their sun-crisped wings with shrill hum, the hover-flies shot past: the wild humble bees sang to themselves as in a frenzy of labour for their ideal they took the pollen from the roses in the hedge; the cuckoos sent call after call of melody from the distant hazel coppice. The sound of summer was everywhere, the earth filled with swelling ecstasy--everything so green and alive, the waving grasses and the hawthorns; the green kingdom charged and surcharged with energy, from the wild strawberry to the mighty, sap-surfeited bole of the oak. Although so still, the vast earth was humming and vibrating, the crescendo of passion reached gradually while the sun swept nearer, day by day, the zenith of its curve.

In one corner of the meadow was a small pond, half hidden by rushes, bearing a golden blazon of flower--in autumn the countrypeople would grind the roasted seeds of the iris to make their “poor man’s coffee.” With them grew the bog asphodel, crowned by a tapering spike of starlike flowers, also yellow, the colour of happiness: in old time this plant was supposed to soften the bones of cattle, hence the Latin name, _ossifragum_. Hidden securely among the rushes, the moor-hen had her nest of dried water-weed, a platform on which at night rested her children, little black balls of fluff with a red beak. A faint chirruping came from the flags, a splash, and silence: the mother had heard my slow approach and called to her young to remain still. Something with a thin, stick-like body, enamelled blue and fanned by a whirling crystal of light, alighted on the open white petals of a crowsfoot--the water-buttercup; the dragonfly folded its gauzy wings and contemplated the still deeps from which, a few hours before, it had crept--a summer thing that would fulfil its destiny so quickly, and die. Like the civilised bees that leave the security of skep and stored caves of honey to the new race, so all the wild things live but to secure the future of their species. Everything strives for the beautiful, the ideal, without conscious effort, maybe, but the ideal is there--all for the species. The nightingale that silvers the dusk with song has finer notes than his ancestor of olden time; he has learnt so much during the centuries; through generations of faithful loyalty to an ideal his tiny soul-flame has become brighter, and his voice speaks with sweeter poetry. On the may trees in the hedge, already shaking their blossoms into the wind, the wild roses were open to the sky; it was now their brief hour of sunshine. Simple petals stained with roseal hue, they waited for the wild bee to bring the pollen that would change the beauty into life.

High sang the larks over the meadow, striving with fluttering wings to reach the blue vision of heaven. Their voices trailed to the earth and filled the heart with hope and joy. Afar, the noisy rooks fed their young in the colony in the elm-tops; at hand, on the ground, golden buttercup and white moon-daisy, lemon-coloured hawk-weed and obstinate charlock, beloved of the visiting bee for its great dowry of honey. The sunbeams had flooded the cold earth during the springtide of the year, and now the earth had sent its flowers and its grasses with their faces turned above, whence came the light that was life, the light that was truth to the birds and the bees, the flowers and the grasses. For years I pondered the higher meaning of life, studying in a city, amid the smoke and clattering hum of traffic; the wild ones have never needed to seek--they have been happy by the brook with its lanced sunpoints and swallowy song of summer over the pebbles and the mossy boulders; they have had no illusions. Nor have they needed philosophies or discarnate paradises.

Everything loved the mowing meadow. By the stream the blackbirds sought for food, the finches came to sip, the hover-flies fanned above the kingcups. Scarlet soldier flies and little plain moths clung to bennet-bloom and spray-like awn, the wind sighed in the grasses as it shook the dust-pollen from the heads. The meadow grasses were timorous of the breeze, and trembled at its coming, like the heart of a maiden reluctant yet yearning: whispering to the wind to bear the seeds, for the mowers would come shortly. Over the water-meadow the lapwings wheeled and spun--the lapwing holds the secret of the swamps and boglands, and you hear it in his wild voice as his wings sough above. In the early spring he makes over the dull furrows his plaintive music, climbing high and diving to the ground as though it were sweet ecstasy to fall, wing-crumpled and broken-hearted, before his mate. Something in the call of the peewit fills me with sadness, like the memory of those passed springs that were in boyhood so glamorous. The peewit’s song is wild, he knows that all things pass, that the leaves and the flowers will die and nothing remain.

Now, as he saw me, his voice was harsher, more husky; somewhere among the tufts of spiked grass his young were crouching, depending on their plumage in harmony with the ground to remain unseen. _See-oo-sweet, see-oo-sweet, woo_, cried the mother: her curled crest was visible against the sky as she turned on broad pinions.

_ii_

One morning, when the cuckoo was silent and the young partridges were following their parents through the culms of the meadow-forest, two labourers arrived with the mowing machine, drawn by a pair of chestnut horses. The overture to the midsummer hum was beginning to be heard in the fields: wild and tame bees ceased not from their labours; the wolf spiders were everywhere in the long grass, searching for fly or insect in their blood lust. Another kind of spider had erected a net-like web between the stalks, with a round silky tunnel in the middle, in which he crouched among the skins of beetles, glowing a dull bronzy green in the sun; the torn wings of a red admiral butterfly never again to pass with colour-dusty sails above the blue scabious flowers; all the tragic remainder of his catch scattered like jetsam at the sea’s marge. The larks still sang into the sunshine. It was the time of year, just past the fullness of young summer, when the song of visitant birds was over and the insect hum had begun its shimmering undertone.

The mowing machine, drawn by the glossy-coated horses, moved down one side of the field. One of the mowers sat on the iron seat and drove the pair; his mate walked alongside and scooped the cut grasses from the knives with a rake. The horses tossed their manes and swished their tails, drawing along with magnificent power the light machine, and leaving behind a swathe of broken grasses and coloured flowers whose fragrance and hue availed no longer--in an instant the life was gone--whither? Rhythmically they moved in straight line, the clattering of the machine mingling with the cries of the driver: like a sea-green wave overcurled and spent in foam the flowery grasses lay in the sun. Cat’s-tail grass, foxtail grass, meadow soft grass, pale red in tint and sometimes called Yorkshire fog; couch grass--the _agropyron_ of ancient Greece--the wild kin of the wheat; the sweet-smelling Vernal grass without whose presence one of the fleeting scents of summer were denied us. Steadily the mowing machine was drawn round the field, fresh wallow lay where but a moment before the meadow-forest bowed and returned to the wind, and the dandelion wrought its goldened disk in the image of the sun. With the lilac flower of the scabious lay the incarnadine head of the poppy--tokening sleep that now had claimed its own. Meadow crane’s-bill, which had overtopped the grasses with the wine-dark sorrel and prickly thistle, the vetch, and the blue speedwell--from the highest to the lowest--all brought low by the skirring knives.

Years ago in an old village the mowers went down into the meadow with their curved scythes, and throughout the long summer day they swung their ancient implements. Every now and then they paused to whet the sap-blurred blades with a stone carried in their belts. _Tu-whet, tu-whaat_--holding the symbol of olden times near the point: it was the extreme edge of the curve that required such constant sharpening. Their hats were bleached by the showers and the sunshine--I do not recollect seeing a new one--but it may have been a faulty impression of childhood. It was thirsty work wielding the scythe on its long handle, and required much skill to prevent the point from digging into the ground. Great wooden “bottles,” or firkins, of ale were brought out in the early morning and hidden in the nettle ditch, well down in the cool and shade; and often a gallon of small ale was drunken by each labourer before the Goatsbeard closed its flowers at noon.

The sun bronzed their arms and dried the wallows; colour soon faded. The scarlet poppy shrivelled to a purple brown, the gold of the dandelion became dulled, the grasses wilted as they fell. It was great fun to follow the workers, to gather whole armfuls of flowers, and to pull their petals apart. They were but flowers to me then, pretty things, their colours delighting the eye, so many of them: the boy was natural and thought little, knowing nothing of life. I have not been there for years, but even now, when so many stacks have grown and dwindled near the barn, I am wandering in those fields. No other meadows can be the same, the flowers there were fairer, the sunlight brighter as it followed the clouds. With so many summers burnt out in autumnal fires there is a dearer thought for every flower of blue chicory: and each germander speedwell, so common in the hedgerow, has in its little petals something of the mystery of the sky. The breath of all the springtimes, the light and shade of summery months, the colour and song of the fields stored, layer upon layer, in the boy’s mind, return a hundredfold, and with them a desire, never ceasing, for others to share in this secret of happiness--the thoughts given by nature.

In the evening the village girls came into the field to turn the hay when the grass was fully dried by the sun, and nothing remained of luscious clover or disk of corn feverfew. The young larks or corncrakes, caught perchance by the rasping sweep of scythe, had been dead many days. They raked the harvest of the meadow into mound-like wakes, while the master haymaker, ever watching the clouds and the wind, urged them to greater endeavour, for rain meant instant loss. We tossed wisps of hay at one another, and formed ourselves into rival parties, each with its castle, and defied our enemies with shrill cries. The lumbering wain came back from the stack, a host of flies pestering the horse, who stamped and kicked in vain when a gadfly fastened to his side and drew his blood. If the weather were fine, and no danger of rain impending, the carter would, as a great treat, let us ride on the broad back of the horse, who appreciated the fan of wych-elm twigs that was whisked about his ears and eyes.

They were happy days--gone now with the wielders of the scythes in their faded hats and their wooden ale-bottles. Now the knives of the mowing machine shear the field in half a day; the happy girls no longer turn the swathes in the evening. The old spirit of the country is dying, and the factory and town calls to its children--there is more life there, and more money to be made. The “big house” is sold, and a new squire has arrived, once a merchant and now a rich man; the sons of the old squire lie somewhere in the deep sea near Jutland, so why retain the estate, heavily taxed and scarce self-supporting, when it will eventually pass away into other hands?

I have come to know other meadows now, but they can never be quite the same. I lie in the flowery fields, seeing the quaking-grass against the sky, and a wild bee swinging on a blue columbine, while a lark rains joy from on high. These return, these are eternal; and with them a voice that is silent, a colour that is faded.

TIGER’S TEETH

(_To J. S. of Croyde_)

The story of the Tiger’s great climb is still told in the village, although it happened a dozen or more years ago.

The headland runs out into the Atlantic for nearly two miles, and is a mile wide across its base. They grow oats there, for the ground is starved. Some of it, indeed, is so poor that the plough never furrows it, and only sheep stray upon the sward. Gorse grows plentifully, hiding many rabbits’ holes, and in summer near the cliff-edge at the Point the curled cast feathers of the gulls tremble in the wind.

At the Point the cliff drops almost sheer to the rocks three hundred and ten feet below, forming an indentation in the headland known as the Hole. Gulls dwell in colonies upon the ledges and in the crannies, and like drifting snowflakes a swirl of birds floats on the air, uprising from the sea and uttering gabbling cries of alarm when an intruder passes near the lip of the Hole.

The village historian told me the story one rainy night in the Nightcrow Inn. He was a great friend of mine, and universally known as “Muggy”; he had been in most places on the earth, returning eventually to his remembered village, happy in the open air with his simple livelihood. The returned wanderer did all kinds of jobs in the hamlets round about, gathered and sold watercress and mushrooms in their seasons, arranged for the purchase of patent manures by the farmers, representing many firms, and was also--“I be nothing if I be not up to date, zur, do ee see?”--an agent for fire insurance in the big town eight miles away. For generations his family had lived in the village; his grandfather had bought the wreckage of _H.M.S. Weasel_, that went on the rocks of the Hole over a century ago, all but one man being drowned. He had the newspaper cuttings of the wreck, and sure enough, his ancestor was mentioned. He cherished that cutting.

One night we had finished our game of whist with the frayed cards, and were talking. The Inn has a low ceiling of black oak beams, roughly shaped, and is lit by a paraffin lamp having a permanent black fringe to its orange flame. In a momentary silence we heard the sharp patter of rain flung against the window by a rapidly rising wind.

“It would be dangerous at the Point to-night,” I murmured, shivering.

Amid a chorus of assent my friend Muggy remembered the epic story of the climb of Raven Rock. Had I heard tell of it? No, I hadn’t, and I settled my elbows more comfortably on the oak table, and prepared for the yarn. More beer first, of course. Muggy would not have any; he drank but a pint every night, he said.

The pots were brought back, foaming with home-brew, the landlord adjusted the milled screw of the lamp so that less dark soot-shadows slipped against the whitewashed guard above, and we listened in silence while the wind drove hard against the western face of the house, bringing the rain-clouds straight from over the wild wastes of the Atlantic.

* * * * *

They had tried to get the robbers in many ways, but rarely were they seen. Evidence of their visitations was much against them. Dead lambs had been found in their pens--little gray bundles lying still while their mothers bleated above them. One morning Voley, the shepherd, came to the yeaning field and found that a ewe itself had been attacked, and had lost an eye. After that he carried the great ten-bore flighting gun that was usually brought out in the frosty winter when wildfowl haunted the great lonely wastes by the estuary formed of the confluence of two rivers. The robbers were too cunning, however, perceived him from invisibility, and never came near.

Muggy had a job at the time trapping rabbits for the bailiff of a gentleman’s farm. He was paid by results, being given so much a head for perfect rabbits; and rabbits did not pass as perfect to the dealer at the market town when half their heads had been battered as though by the blows of some mighty instrument. The curious thing was that he did not know for a long while what caused the damage. He thought of a fox, but a fox would not have mauled rabbits like that; he would have carried them away. The idea of a badger being the aggressor came to him, but he could find no spoor of a badger’s pad, which, once seen, is never forgotten. And still the mysterious depredations went on. Farmer Smith of Crowberry, later on in the year, lost seven chicks one morning, with no sign of how they had gone. He thought of hawks, and waited all that afternoon with a gun, but nothing came. He knew that had it been a kestrel the bird would have returned for more. Another morning he lost seventeen. Nine of them had been left--mutilated lumps of stained feathers. They looked as though a spike had been driven through their bodies. He knew that it was no ordinary thing that caused the destruction.

Mortality among the lambs continued. And then, one night in the Nightcrow Inn, light came to them. They slapped their thighs, and rattled their pint mugs; of course, it could only be “thay” ravens! Till closing time that night it was the only subject talked about.

The Tiger was there and his brother Aaron--two men who belonged to a family that has been famous for cliff scaling in the district for many generations. They had immense arms, being blacksmiths.

The following day a boat pulled round the headland, and the stronghold of the robbers was detected, though no sign of them could be seen. Aaron was in the boat, and he fixed the place by a peculiar formation of the edge of the cliff. This done, he grunted, and a long pull back to the sands began.

The waning moon of dawn had floated above the Exmoor hills when the next morning three men left the village and set off along the road to the base of the headland. They carried ropes, hauling blocks, a great crowbar, and a sledge-hammer. John Smith of Crowberry was one, and his companions were the blacksmith brothers.

They were going to rob the robbers.

Now ravens are rare birds, having been persecuted during the centuries almost to extinction. The reasons for that persecution are easily understandable. There was no compensation for the dead lambs, no money paid out for the slaughtered chicks, and many farmers, especially in the remote districts, found it hard enough to live, without being preyed upon by ravens. Still, the ravens were now heavily protected by law; in the village it was reckoned that any one who took their eggs or shot the parent birds would be imprisoned for at least a month. By reason of their rarity, a certain visiting bird-fancier from the town had mentioned that he would give ten shillings a bird for any fledgelings brought to him. It was a grand price, they agreed at the Nightcrow Inn; not knowing, of course, that the dealer would make a huge and assured profit by sending them to London.

Along one of the sheep-wrought paths, among the springing brakeferns and blackthorns, sea-bleached holly-bushes and gorse clusters, just beginning to respond to the sunbeams, the three men went that spring morning. Already the larks were singing high in an azure sky, the kestrels hanging in the light wind, the buzzard wheeling in lone circles far above them. They did not pause to watch, however, for there was a dangerous job on hand, and it was three miles to the Point.

The three hunters kept a sharp look-out for the ravens, but saw nothing, even when they neared the lip of the Hole.

Aaron dropped his bar, the tackle was flung on the sward, and coats were stripped off. Work began in earnest. The first few powerful twangs of the sledge-hammer on the bar woke echoes in the Hole, and a thousand gulls spread pearly wings tipped with jet and slipped into the air. An uproar of hoarse voices came upwards, and, mounting high, a great seabird, spanning near six feet, dived at them with a soughing of vast wings and passed a bare two feet over their heads. But the men took no notice. Time was precious, and they feared that the policeman might discover them; the terrifying thought of prison was ever behind the thought of golden sovereigns in their pockets. Deep into the sward Aaron drove the bar, until it remained rigid, leaning backwards from the line of the cliff-face. Under his arms Tiger passed the hempen rope and the thinner guide-rope, while John Smith of Crowberry adjusted the hauling blocks.

“Thaat be aa-right, reckons.”

“Aiy aiy!”

Aaron and John Smith of Crowberry took a strain on the rope and began to pay out hand over hand. The Tiger leaned outwards over the Hole and slowly disappeared over the edge.

Two tugs on the guide-rope, and the men remained still. Next came three tugs, and Aaron whispered to Farmer John that Tiger was near the ledge. They held on tight.

Meanwhile Tiger was spinning slowly on the rope. He started to swing, backwards and forwards, aiming for the ledge whereon was the mass of twigs and sticks comprising the ravens’ nest. He was about two hundred feet above the rocks, and looking down he noticed how the waves slid smoothly over them, churning and boiling white with foam afterwards. Sometimes a gull passed near him, showing its yellow beak with the reddish blotch at the end. Now he was swinging nearer the ledge--in and out, in and out. Once or twice he looked upwards and wondered what he should do if the old ravens came for him. He had no stick, and their beaks could easily pierce a lamb’s skull. But not so much as a croak was to be heard. He decided--as he heaved to and fro--that with his share of the money he would buy a purse-net for shore-fishing. Nearer and nearer he swung to the nest, and at last he could touch it with his foot. But the time was not yet, so he pushed hard away with his feet, and a loose fragment of stone, dislodged from above, hissed past him, and grew smaller as it dropped towards the sea. Once more he pushed away from the ledge, which was about two feet wide, swung towards it, grasped a projecting stone, clung hard with his left hand, and gave one tug on the guide-rope. Up above they lowered him one foot, and he clambered to the ledge, panting.

In the centre of the cradle of sticks, a yard across, gaped three fledgeling ravens. At sight of Tiger they opened their big black beaks in fear and croaked dolefully. He put his hand over and one pecked at it; he struck it a sharp blow and it croaked the more, deep, rasping, and hoarse.

Tiger knew he would have to hurry. He seized one of the three birds by the leg and dragged it from the fouled nest, to which it clung gawkily. But at last it was free, its legs tied with the twine already looped to his belt, and thrust into his basket. Quickly he seized the other two and tied them, noticing while he did so that pieces of dead gulls, rabbits, chickens, lamb’s wool, fish, frogs, and broken ducks’ eggs lay about on the twigs. At last he had secured them, and left the ledge. The old birds, if they were near, made no sign. For a while Tiger swung idly, satisfied, looking lazily at the tide below. A few stones hurtled down, and one hit his wrist, numbing it; the fledgelings kicked and struggled, squawking. Three minutes, and his swinging was much lessened; he gave five tugs for the hauling signal.

There was no response, for just before John Smith and Aaron had realised with fear that the crowbar had worked loose in the sward. Unthinkingly they had relaxed the strain, and the loose stratum had yielded.

The Tiger tugged away, but there was no answering lift. Five times he tugged, slowly. He hung still over the rocks, whence the tide was now ebbing, leaving them gaunt and gray.

Up above the two men held tight. They dared not move, for fear of the bar coming right out of the ground. If there had been one more man it would have been possible to haul Tiger up, bit by bit. As it was, they could only remain still. The weight on the rope was heavy, but they could stop so for hours if need be; till help came, at any rate.

Presently Tiger realised what had happened, and grunted in disgust. He started to climb, using his arms only, for he was frightened lest he should hurt the birds and so lessen their value. Dimly he realised that if he tired and dropped, the rope would jerk the other two over the cliff-edge, and all three, with the birds, would crash to their death. He climbed twenty feet, feeling no fatigue. There was another hundred feet to go, easy work, before the cliff bulged slightly. Slabs of dislodged rock hurtled past him, and one cut his brow. The blood poured into his eye, and he spat angrily.

When the first ache came to his damaged wrist he wound the rope round his right leg and stood upon it. He cared no longer about the birds. But he knew that to rest thus was no rest at all, so upwards he went again--a terrible laboured climbing, slowly and with a strained wrist, blood running from broken knuckles, and the sweat pouring from his body. He began to feel the weight of the dragging loop of rope below him, but still he struggled upwards. A shower of dust spat into his face, and he wondered if he were blinded. His arms shook, his muscles burned, and his palms, in spite of their coating of horn, were beginning to tear. He could hardly see for the blood and sweat in his eyes, and as he breathed he snored heavily, with great shuddering gasps.

The jutting-out cliff was just above him now. Here the rope lay flat and taut against the loose rubble, but he dug each hand alternately into the shale and literally dragged himself up, fist over fist. Then it was possible to press his toes into the slight slope, and rest.

For a minute he lay thus, in agony. But he knew that to rest much was fatal; reaction would set in. He wound his left leg round the rope, seized the guide-rope (which ran through another loose belt) and patiently pulled its lower end through so that there should be no slack between him and the two men above. After an eternity of patient hauling the line lay straight between him and the lip of the Hole. Then he wound it twice round his thick neck, and bit on it firmly with his teeth. This done, he gave five tugs on it, and saw it tighten. Crushing his jaws together, he took the mighty strain, and was drawn up a foot. Arching his back, and leaning out nearly at right angles to the face of the cliff, he put one foot above the other. All the weight of his ascent was borne by his teeth; they were his last hope. Tiger’s teeth were yellow like old ivory, and the best in the village. Many a time he had taken a hundredweight sack in them and moved about with it; many a time he had swung from a beam by them, holding a rope in his jaws. Now they were to save his life. Both the haulers and himself were well-nigh exhausted when his beard covered with blood-stained froth appeared over the lip of the cliff, and they dragged him sobbing and cursing on the matted grass.

Ten minutes later they had coiled up their ropes, taken up the bar, and were walking quickly to the village. The three ravens were alive and well, quite unhurt by Tiger’s struggles. The men spoke seldom as they walked; their fear was that the policeman would see them.

They reached Tiger’s cottage in safety and closed the door behind them. His wife had a two-gallon jar of small ale for them, and Tiger drank a gallon, only pausing to fill his basin. Then he licked his moustache, and sat down on a chair. The other two men had thrown the tackle on the table, and were taking deep draughts of the beer. They had finished the two gallons when a succession of heavy blows came on the door; these ceased, and there was a great thudding on the roof.

At first they thought it was the policeman. Rural folk are usually terrified at the idea of the law; they have the simple imagination of children.

“Come in, zur,” quavered Mrs. Tiger.

Aaron, who was a devout chapel-goer, began to tremble.

“It be a ghostie!” he whispered.

“Git out!” scoffed Mrs. Tiger, for she had seen two large black shapes that she recognised pass across the little window.

Sure enough, the old ravens had discovered their young. The curious thing, Muggy emphasised, was that there had been no sign of them either during Tiger’s climb or afterwards, while the three men were tramping the three miles to his cottage, nor had they heard any croaking.